Not just a language with white faces: Analysing #taalmonument on Instagram using machine learning

Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Not just a language with white faces: Analysing #taalmonument on Instagram using machine learning
 
Creator Kotzé, Eduan Senekal, Burgert
 
Subject — Afrikaans; Taalmonument; machine learning; convolutional neural networks; Instagram; apartheid.
Description rom the late 19th century, and especially during apartheid (1948–1994), Afrikaans became inextricably tied with white people, white domination and apartheid. This association has persisted after 1994, and calls to preserve Afrikaans are often derided with claims that the preference for Afrikaans is also a preference for racial segregation. In such anti-Afrikaans views, Afrikaans is seen as synonymous with white people and apartheid despite the fact that Afrikaans was never exclusively spoken by white people. This prejudice towards Afrikaans is also shown towards the Afrikaanse Taalmonument, which was unveiled in 1975 to commemorate this language. Using machine learning and a large dataset of social media posts from Instagram, we show that not only white people visit this monument to Afrikaans, but also take pictures here and post about it on one of the largest social media platforms. As such, we show that the interest in this monument – just like the language itself – is not exclusively tied to one race. We also make suggestions for further research, such as using machine learning for image recognition using social media datasets that could illuminate how other South African monuments are seen in the contemporary world.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor University of the Free State
Date 2020-12-15
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — machine learning
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/td.v16i1.871
 
Source The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa; Vol 16, No 1 (2020); 8 pages 2415-2005 1817-4434
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://td-sa.net/index.php/td/article/view/871/1540 https://td-sa.net/index.php/td/article/view/871/1539 https://td-sa.net/index.php/td/article/view/871/1541 https://td-sa.net/index.php/td/article/view/871/1538
 
Coverage South Africa — —
Rights Copyright (c) 2020 Eduan Kotzé, Burgert Senekal https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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